Students registered in Professor Filiatrault's graduate-level engineering classes may have been happy to see a 'class cancelled' sign posted on the door last week. What they may not have realized was their professor was off serving a country in desperate need.
Andre Filiatrault, director of the Multi-Disciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research and professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, returned Friday from an emergency mission in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Filiatrault and his team of 10 engineers were among the first engineers sent to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to assess the condition of buildings and determine which ones are salvageable. Filiatrault, along with eight of his team members speak French, which allowed them to communicate with Haitians.
'When we met the UN organization responsible for building assessment, they had nothing in place,' Filiatrault said. 'They didn't know what do, they didn't know where to go so we came in prepared.'
The team used ATC-20, a procedure that allows engineers to assess a building in 15 to 30 minutes. The team marks buildings green if they can be used, yellow if they can be used with restrictions and red they are unsafe.
During its one-week stay, the team evaluated over 120 buildings for numerous organizations, including the UN, which asked the team to evaluate buildings used for living quarters for its workers and for Haitians. Until recently, almost everyone has been living outside, for fear that unstable buildings will collapse.
The World Food Program also asked them to inspect its warehouses, which held thousands of tons of food.
'These buildings had not been entered since the earthquake for fear of aftershock,' Filiatrault said. 'They needed to know what they could do with these buildings and if they could use the food.'
As of Saturday, the WFP started a massive food distribution.
'We cleared a number of these warehouses and now they can go in and get the food out,' Filiatrault said.
He added that the numerous reports of violence and civil unrest are not as common as some media outlets portray. Hungry people do storm 'like bees' when food distribution trucks come, but he said people are waiting calmly and forming lines for food and water.
'It was bad … the UN told us that they could only feed around 100,000 people per day – that's in a population of around two million,' Filiatrault said. 'The average [person] was only getting a meal every three days … the people of Haiti are resilient, although the conditions are very, very difficult they went about their lives.'
Filiatrault has participated in recon and assessment efforts in four previous earthquake-stricken areas, but says this mission was different. Instead of just identifying usable buildings, the team also participated in the relief effort. Team members roped off unsafe buildings and actively warned Haitians not to camp near or enter hazardous buildings.
'The magnitude of the devastation was so large that it cannot compare to anything I have seen before,' Filiatrault said. 'The [city's] construction method ignored completely the impact of earthquakes … there was also no building code enforcement.'
Depending on the area of the city, up to 60 to 70 percent of buildings were badly damaged. Closer to the epicenter on the west side of city near downtown, one third of the buildings had collapsed, largely because they weren't built to withstand earthquakes.
Filiatrault added that a major problem in the country is a lack of understanding and fear of earthquakes, along with the poor construction of buildings.
The country is now rebuilding, but Filiatrault fears quick fixes. He says some people have begun rebuilding their homes with rubble, but are building without guidelines or enforcement. They are building the way they know how to, which Filiatrault insists is 'no good.'
The UN is working with the Haitian government to separate the city into zones, he said. The zones would be organized by higher seismic risk depending on the geometry and fault orientation of the city.
When Filiatrault left on Thursday, he said a plan was in place for all the buildings in the 'red zone' to be demolished and rebuilt somewhere else.
'The question is, if they're going to be rebuilt, are they going to be built the same way? The UN is sensitive to that and they will try to influence the Haitian government to use building codes in the short term and that in the future there will be quake resistant buildings.'
However, the rebuilding of Haiti will be a 'tremendous task,' a process predicted to take years, maybe decades, he said.
A replacement team of engineers has arrived in Port-au-Prince and will use the same guidelines and system Filiatrault and his team established. UB will likely not send another team in the short term, but will remain supportive of the relief effort, he said.
Of 10 engineers, eight spoke one of the country's native languages, French. Half the team spoke the Haitian Creole as well. A French-speaking team was crucial in the initial assessment efforts and enabled them to better communicate and work with Haitians.
Another 60 to 70 percent speak a type of Creole based on the French language, a result of European colonization, according to Jeffrey Good, an assistant professor in the department of linguistics.
'Haitian is considered a French-based Creole because most of its vocabulary is drawn from French, but, it has its own grammar.' Good said. 'Hawaiian Creole or Jamaican Creole, by contrast are English-based creoles-- with lots of English vocabulary but their own grammars as well. Because Haitian draws so much vocabulary from French, it is sometimes mistaken as a "corrupt" variety of French, but from the linguist's perspective, this is not at all true, it is simply its own language.'
Good added that Haitian is also the most widely spoken Creole language in the world and is an official language of Haiti along with French, which is considered to be the language of the educated.
Filiatrault's French speaking came in use multiple times throughout the week, in one case he assisted a US Marine platoon in translating a conversation between the platoon and a group of school leaders. The team also translated the placard system of assessing buildings into French.
'It was very important to speak the language,' Filiatrault said. 'We were able to set up a database, e-mail and procedure for the UN.'
Filiatrault expressed that work in Haiti will not be completed for some time. The American society of civil engineering is planning to send a larger team and is collecting resumes for French speaking engineers.
Although Filiatrault may not head an additional team to Haiti, MCEER along with AIDG will continue providing assistance to the UN and Haiti.
E-mail: features@ubspectrum.com
